What is recorded here

Dunore is a coastal promontory fort in County Kerry, Ireland, where later defences built in 1579-80 probably buried or removed traces of an older occupied headland. The sea may have taken the first walls, the first fires and the first warnings, leaving only the newer stone to mark the shape of the place. What remains is a boundary between eras, with the older life reduced to a gap the newer fort fills.

National Monument No. 10018. Westropp, writing in 1910, commented that ‘Nearly every suitable headland that I have met in Mayo, Aran, Clare, Waterford, Wexford, and Dublin, with most of those in Cork, have proved to be fortified, so we may be permitted to suppose that the very suitable little headland in Smerwick was not without its early occupants and defences.’ (Westropp 1910, 199) While it appears likely that a promontory fort existed here at a much earlier period, the later fortifications, dating from 1579-80, probably have removed or obscure evidence of the previous works. Compiled by: Paul Walsh Date of upload: 7 November 2017

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